Presentation slides

Session description

WCAG2 is a long series of documents. Gian Wild knows this better than most: she spent six years on the W3C WCAG Working Group writing them. It’s a lot to ask that every developer and project manager read the complete guidelines, including informative content. However there are some very useful — and sometimes hidden — techniques in WCAG2. And some are even at Level AAA. Join Gian to find out what these are.

About Gian Wild

Gian has worked in the accessibility industry since 1998 and consulted on the development of the first Level AAA accessible web site in Australia (Disability Information Victoria). She has worked with the Disability Services arm of the Victorian Government for over thirteen years to keep the four iterations of the Disability Services site (Disability Information Victoria, Disability Services, Disability Online and DiVine), Level AAA accessible. She ran the accessibility consultancy PurpleTop from 2000 to 2005 and built the accessibility tool, PurpleCop.
Follow Gian on Twitter: @accessibilityoz"
["post_title"]=>
string(51) "Gian Wild - WCAG2 accessibility: the hidden nuggets"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(299) "

There are some very useful — and sometimes hidden — techniques in WCAG2. And some are even at Level AAA. Join Gian to find out what these are.

Session description

HTML5 Video has been a hot topic for the last couple of years — but with new additions to the specification, we can now extend it beyond all recognition. In this session we’ll look at basic timed data, closed captioning and more — and as we adventure into more sophisticated uses of the technology, we’ll explore what additional value timed data can provide to your video, with attention paid to how you can implement it today.
The key focuses of this session will be accessibility, searchable media, and enriching existing multimedia experiences with timed data, all with a liberal application of flashy eye-candy. And of course we’re using the freshly minted Timed Text Track specification, soon appearing in a browser near you!

About Christopher Giffard

Christopher Giffard is a full stack web developer at the Department of Education, Employment, and Workplace Relations in Canberra. He’s somewhat new to the government, having a career background as a web guy in graphic design and advertising agencies — but hopes to bring a slice of that mad, informal world to the Australian public service.
He gets a kick out of solving problems everybody else avoids, has a soft spot for architecture and design, is particularly interested in electronic music, and the algorithmic generation thereof. His current secret project involves natural language processing… and sarcasm detection.
Follow Christopher on Twitter: @cgiffard"
["post_title"]=>
string(65) "Christopher Giffard - HTML5 Video, Captioning, and Timed Metadata"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(470) "

The key focuses of this session will be accessibility, searchable media, and enriching existing multimedia experiences with timed data, all with a liberal application of flashy eye-candy. And of course we’re using the freshly minted Timed Text Track specification, soon appearing in a browser near you!

Presentation slides

Session description

The key idea of the Semantic Web is to make information on the Web easily consumable by machines. As machines start to understand web pages as sources of data that can be easily combined with other public data on the Web, the promise is that search on the Web will move well beyond the current paradigm of retrieving pages by keywords. Instead, search engines will start to answer complex queries based on the cumulative knowledge of the Web.
In this presentation, we overview the basic set of technologies that can be used to annotate web pages so that they can be processed by data-aware search engines. In particular, we discuss the RDFa and microdata standards of the W3C designed for marking up data in HTML pages. We look at the ways in which this information is currently used by search engines, including the latest schema.org collaboration between Bing, Google, and Yahoo!, which provides a basic set of vocabulary items understood by all three major search engines on the Web.

About Peter Mika

Peter Mika is a researcher and data architect at Yahoo! Research in Barcelona, working on the applications of semantic technology to Web search. He received his BS in computer science from Eotvos Lorand University and his MSc and PhD in computer science (summa cum laude) from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His interdisciplinary work in social networks and the Semantic Web earned him a Best Paper Award at the 2005 International Semantic Web Conference and a First Prize at the 2004 Semantic Web Challenge. From 2006 to 2009, he has been a co-chair of the Semantic Web Challenge. Mika is the youngest member elected to the editorial board of the Journal of Web Semantics. He is the author of the book ‘Social Networks and the Semantic Web’ (Springer, 2007). In 2008 he has been selected as one of “AI’s Ten to Watch” by the editorial board of the IEEE Intelligent Systems journal. Peter is a regular speaker at conferences.
Follow Peter on Twitter: @pmika"
["post_title"]=>
string(38) "Peter Mika - Making the Web searchable"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(315) "

In this presentation, we overview the basic set of technologies that can be used to annotate web pages so that they can be processed by data-aware search engines.

Presentation slides

Session description

The Australian War Memorial is connecting and enriching online archives and collections toward building a platform for telling history. Through Drupal 7 and Linked Data, the Memorial intends to develop tools that designers, researchers and historians can use to help find new ways of building historical narratives.
During this session we will demonstrate some early prototypes and experiments, key uses of Linked Data, practical publishing tools and discuss how this work is unfolding inside one of Australia’s major collecting institutions.

About Adam Bell

Adam Bell leads the web production team at the Australian War Memorial, where he works with curators and historians to publish the Memorial’s vast archives and collections online. He has a background as an artist, cultural worker, teacher and printmaker and plays in a rock n roll band.
Follow Adam on Twitter: @bumphead

About David Peterson

David Peterson has been pushing at the boundaries of Web development since 1995; that combined with a background in wildlife cinematography brings fresh insight into what can be a geeky sort of space. He has built a number of high profile sites for the ABC, Australian science groups and many others.
David works as a consultant with PreviousNext and lives way down south in cool Tasmania — regularly breathing on his fingers just to tap away at the keyboard. He is busy building Web apps built with Open Source toolkits utilising Java, PHP, Python, Linked Data and the almighty Drupal. He enjoys exploring deep into the guts of the Semantic Web and Linked Data to discover new connections and visualisations that help empower story tellers.
Follow David on Twitter: @davidseth"
["post_title"]=>
string(107) "Adam Bell & David Peterson - Bringing History Alive: Telling stories with Linked Data and open source tools"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(535) "

During this session we will demonstrate some early prototypes and experiments, key uses of Linked Data, practical publishing tools and discuss how this work is unfolding inside one of Australia’s major collecting institutions.

Presentation slides

Session description

Mozilla is dedicated to ensuring that competition and innovation thrive on the Internet. In the last decade we rescued the Web from a near-monopoly and restored competition to the browser market. Now the standards-based Web platform is evolving rapidly — mostly in a good direction — and is defeating some of its competitors, such as proprietary browser plugins. However, it faces fresh challenges, in particular, single-vendor platforms for mobile devices that are attracting application developers away from the Web platform. In this talk I will describe the work we’re doing to ensure that the standards-based Web wins again — developing new technologies, extending Web standards, and shipping great products on all kinds of devices. I’ll talk about the challenges we face and what people who care about competition and freedom can do to help.

About Robert O’Callahan

Robert O’Callahan has been trying to save the world by contributing to Mozilla since 1999. In 2005 he left a career in computer science research at IBM to move back to New Zealand and work full-time for Mozilla, building up an Auckland development office (which is hiring!). He works on the Gecko engine that powers Firefox, focusing on layout, rendering, and media. He manages the video and media team, but prefers coding."
["post_title"]=>
string(61) "Robert O’Callahan - The Open Web Platform in the mobile era"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(490) "

In this talk I will describe the work we’re doing to ensure that the standards-based Web wins again — developing new technologies, extending Web standards, and shipping great products on all kinds of devices. I’ll talk about the challenges we face and what people who care about competition and freedom can do to help.

Presentation slides

Session description

Augmented Reality lets you peel away the blinkers from your real world eyes to see the rich data and information that exists all around you. But up until now it has relied largely on proprietary tools and standards. Finally, we’re close to being able to augment our world using web technologies. Soon this will be a common part of the web browsing and mobile device experience. Now is the time to look at these future trends and the state of a specific list of API standardisation activities and the forces shaping them. We’ll also look at the current obstacles, risks and issues to explore what may prevent this landscape from evolving as it appears it will.
This presentation aims to document the AR standardisation efforts over the last few years as well as what’s possible right now and in the near future from a distinctly web-based perspective.

About Rob Manson

Rob is the Managing Director and co-founder of MOB, an innovative R&D lab based in Sydney. He regularly presents on mobile, AR and future technology developments. He is a co-founder of http://AR-UX.com & http://ARStandards.org and is an invited expert on the W3C’s Points of Interest Working Group. Rob is not just a spectator when it comes to the future of technology, he’s actively working to shape it. And he’s been doing this though building web based startups in Sydney since 1994.
Follow Rob on Twitter: @nambor"
["post_title"]=>
string(50) "Rob Manson - Web standards based Augmented Reality"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(348) "

This presentation aims to document the AR standardisation efforts over the last few years as well as what’s possible right now and in the near future from a distinctly web-based perspective.

Presentation slides

Session description

The application of web accessibility guidelines in a holistic manner across all roles of a web team continues to encounter resistance. This is often due to a lack of resources and knowledge, or no sense of relevancy in certain web roles. While there is solid support of the guidelines by accessibility activists and many front-end developers, a large percentage of other web practitioners in non-technical roles do not know how to integrate accessible design practices into their daily work, despite wanting to.
By re-categorising accessibility guidelines into role-based groupings, such as visual design, content writing and information architecture, guidelines become more accessible to inexperienced web practitioners across a broad range of web roles. The application of accessibility guidelines then becomes more integrated and holistic, thereby reducing project timelines and costs while increasing the overall accessibility of a site from initial design stages.
This method enables practitioners to apply skills specific to their role to a narrow range of accessibility guidelines particular to their area of expertise. For example, the visual designer would create a design and evaluate colour contrast before submitting the design to the development team. Likewise, an interaction designer would consult with the Javascript specialist to ensure the menu design satisfies relevant accessibility guidelines.

About Lisa Herrod

Lisa is the Director and Principal Consultant at Scenario Seven, an Inclusive Design Consultancy based in Sydney. With 15 years experience on the web, the past 10 years of her work has centred on design research, usability, accessibility and inclusive strategies. Lisa is best known for her role based approach to web accessibility, which has seen the re-categorisation of WCAG checkpoints into a user-centred, practitioner-focused grouping for content developers, visual designers, developers and user experience professionals.
Scenario Seven specialises in creating accessible, inclusive design strategies that integrate holistically with traditional user research practices. This includes anything from requirements gathering to the review of design documentation (functional specs, wireframes & visual designs), user research and WCAG compliance. We design for diversity.
Follow Lisa on Twitter: @scenariogirl"
["post_title"]=>
string(92) "Lisa Herrod - Accessibility for web teams: Recategorising WCAG 2 using a role-based approach"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(314) "

This method enables practitioners to apply skills specific to their role to a narrow range of accessibility guidelines particular to their area of expertise.

Presentation slides

Session description

With most browsers adding increasing support, and the simplicity of providing fallbacks for those that don’t, CSS3 gradients are something we can start to use right now. They benefit our users with faster websites and ourselves with more time in our hands to spend in other things, since they are easy to create, edit and update. A very powerful feature that can also be utilized for a surprising number of design effects, even ones that don’t resemble gradients at all. In this talk, Lea will explore CSS3 gradients in great depth and it’s almost guaranteed that no matter your expertise level, you will walk out having learned new things.

About Lea Verou

Lea Verou is a front-end engineer currently living in Greece. She discovered programming at the young age of 12 (web development a few years after) and it was love at first …line. In 2008, she co-founded Fresset Ltd, whose websites have attracted a large following in the Greek internet scene, they are currently working frantically on their first international project.

Fed up with the lack of proper web development education in Greece, she co-organised a university course which teaches all aspects of modern, standards-based Web development, including CSS3, HTML5 and ES5 as regular parts of its content.

During her spare time, she blogs about CSS, JavaScript and web usability at leaverou.me.

With most browsers adding increasing support, and the simplicity of providing fallbacks for those that don’t, CSS3 gradients are something we can start to use right now. They benefit our users with faster websites and ourselves with more time in our hands to spend in other things, since they are easy to create, edit and update. A very powerful feature that can also be utilized for a surprising number of design effects, even ones that don’t resemble gradients at all. In this talk, Lea will explore CSS3 gradients in great depth and it’s almost guaranteed that no matter your expertise level, you will walk out having learned new things.

Presentation slides

Session description

What does one learn after 15 years of development?
I've built web sites and applications for Tesco, NASA, Channel 4, Three telecom. I even worked on the world's #1 site. You might expect to hear about performance or some language I like or framework. I don't think any of those are the answer. You can always pick better or worse tools for the right job, but there are some fundamental things that experience teaches you. I'd like to share my experiences with you. Here are Tom's rules of development:

Complexity is the enemy

Don't optimise too soon

All rules are made to be broken

I'll discuss these rules and how they can make you a better developer. Less blood and sweat, more tears. Tears of joy that is.

About Tom Hughes-Croucher

Tom Hughes-Croucher is a web developer and Chief Evangelist at Joyent. Tom has contributed to a number of web standards for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the British Standards Institute (BSI). He has worked for and with numerous well known brands including Yahoo!, NASA, Tesco, Three telecom and UK Channel 4. He is currently writing "Up and Running with Node.js" for O'Reilly Media.

Presentation slides

Session description

In this session Dave will cover high-​​performance presentation and animation using HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3 and Canvas. Examples will include mobile-​​friendly techniques you can use today for creating game effects and “flashy” user experiences across a range of browsers and devices.

About Dave Balmer

As a Senior Software Engineer with Palm Developer Relations, Dave is a JavaScript guru currently focused on mobile app development. He is the creator of four JavaScript application frameworks, including Jo, which is a lightweight solution for cross-​​platform mobile apps.
In his spare time, Dave designs and writes games, makes music, and writes.
Follow Dave on Twitter:@balmer"
["post_title"]=>
string(42) "Dave Balmer - Rockstar graphics with HTML5"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(452) "

In this session Dave will cover high-​​performance presentation and animation using HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3 and Canvas. Examples will include mobile-​​friendly techniques you can use today for creating game effects and “flashy” user experiences across a range of browsers and devices.

Presentation slides

Session description

There’s an old expression, that there are only 2 hard problems in computing: naming, cache invalidation and off-by-one errors. Building offline web apps is all about those hard problems. There are some different ways of storing stuff — such as html5 caching, html5 storage, sqllite, and even native stores such as contacts and calendars — and we’ll sing their praises. But the really hard problems are knowing what to store, whether the stuff is still good or needs refreshing, how much to store, how to resolve conflicts between the client and server, how to integrate with data-specific stores, all in a bewildering cacophony of network and storage limited devices. We’ll spend the bulk of our time on these hard problems, which is probably more useful than api description and sample code.

About Dave Orchard

Dave Orchard is Mobile Architect at Salesforce.com and located in Vancouver, Canada. This means being involved in many mobile platforms, architectures, tools, technologies and APIs. Prior to that, he was a co-founder of Ayogo Games and focused on iPhone and ruby/merb/mysql based casual social games. Back further in the mists of time, he was the Web standards lead for BEA Systems for 7 years, including being elected three times to 2 year terms on the W3C Technical Architecture Group chaired by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
Follow Dave on Twitter:@DaveO
"
["post_title"]=>
string(42) "Dave Orchard - Offline Web Apps with HTML5"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(473) "

There’s an old expression, that there are only 2 hard problems in computing: naming, cache invalidation and off-by-one errors. Building offline web apps is all about those hard problems. We’ll spend the bulk of our time on these hard problems, which is probably more useful than api description and sample code.

Presentation slides

Session description

This keynote will focus on the unique potential offered to web developers — the ability to use the web platform to build compelling applications that reach across different devices, scenarios and environments. In discussing the approaches necessary to deliver great experiences across all these spaces, we will also uncover unique opportunities in a platform that reaches from mobile phones to the biggest display screen in your house.

About Chris WIlson

Chris Wilson is a Developer Advocate at Google Inc. He began working on web browsers in 1993 when he co-authored the original Windows version of NCSA Mosaic, the first mass-market WWW browser. After leaving NCSA in 1994 and spending a year working on the AIRMosaic web browser for SPRY, Inc., he joined Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team as a developer in 1995.
Over the course of 15 years, Chris represented Microsoft in many standards working groups, in particular helping develop standards for Cascading Style Sheets, HTML, the Document Object Model and XSL through the W3C working groups. He also developed the first implementation of Cascading Style Sheets in Internet Explorer – the first, in fact, in any mass-market web browser. Beginning in 2001, he spent a few years working on the WPF project, but rejoined the IE team in 2004 to lead the IE Platform and Security team, then moved to work on the Javascript engine team in 2009.
In 2010, Chris left Microsoft and joined Google’s Developer Relations team, and is currently working on the Google TV project.
In his free time, he enjoys photography and hiking with his wife and daughter, and scuba diving in the cool waters of Puget Sound. Occasionally he remembers to share his thoughts on his blog.
Follow Chris on Twitter:@cwilso"
["post_title"]=>
string(53) "Chris Wilson - Keynote: The Convergence of All Things"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(594) "

This keynote will focus on the unique potential offered to web developers — the ability to use the web platform to build compelling applications that reach across different devices, scenarios and environments. In discussing the approaches necessary to deliver great experiences across all these spaces, we will also uncover unique opportunities in a platform that reaches from mobile phones to the biggest display screen in your house.

Presentation slides

Session description

As browsers explode with new capabilities and migrate onto devices users can be left wondering, “what’s taking so long?” Learn how HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the web itself conspire against a fast-running application and simple tips to create a snappy interface that delight users instead of frustrating them.

About Nicholas Zakas

Nicholas C. Zakas is principal front-end engineer for the Yahoo! homepage, a contributor to YUI, and an author. Nicholas has written Professional JavaScript for Web Developers, Professional Ajax, and High Performance JavaScript. He has also contributed a chapter to Steve Souders’ Even Faster Web Sites. Nicholas posts regularly at his blog as well as on YUI Blog.
Follow Nicholas on Twitter:@slicknet"
["post_title"]=>
string(39) "Nicholas Zakas - Mobile Web Speed Bumps"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(474) "

As browsers explode with new capabilities and migrate onto devices users can be left wondering, “what’s taking so long?” Learn how HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the web itself conspire against a fast-running application and simple tips to create a snappy interface that delight users instead of frustrating them.

Presentation slides

Session description

Being a front-end designer used to mean pixel hacking and endless rounds of pain while trying to make sites and applications “look the same in each browser”. Thankfully, we now live in more interesting times. But as we strive to make our web apps a pleasure to use, the vast array of tools and techniques available to us present their own set of challenges. In this session you will learn to ask the right questions to guide your choice of tools and the design.
Find out how to creatively use new features of CSS3 (gradients, multiple backgrounds, generated content, and many more) to give life to your design ideas, make them adaptable and maintainable, and provide the best experience possible on an array of platforms.
Finally, you’ll hear how to create a library of simple and ready-to-use design patterns, that you can incorporate into your workflow to bring your designs to life much faster.

Find out how to creatively use new features of CSS3 (gradients, multiple backgrounds, generated content, and many more) to give life to your design ideas, make them adaptable and maintainable, and provide the best experience possible on an array of platforms.

Presentation slides

Session description

The Canvas tag has been around for a while, and HTML5 has given it more visibility. It’s now finding its way into most mobile browsers, and even a majority of desktop browsers. This talk will give a solid overview of what the canvas tag is, what it can do, and how it compares with other technologies like SVG and Flash. Several practical code examples will show how you can use it along with CSS3 and other HTML5 goodies to make your web apps more featured, efficient and downright cool.

About Dave Balmer

As a Senior Software Engineer with Palm Developer Relations, Dave is a JavaScript guru currently focused on mobile app development. He is the creator of four JavaScript application frameworks, including Jo HTML5 Mobile App Framework, which is a lightweight solution for cross-platform mobile apps.
In his spare time, Dave designs and writes games, makes music, and writes.
Follow Dave on Twitter:@balmer"
["post_title"]=>
string(46) "Dave Balmer - HTML5 Graphics: Canvas Deep Dive"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(478) "

The Canvas tag has been around for a while, and HTML5 has given it more visibility. It’s now finding its way into most mobile browsers, and even a majority of desktop browsers. This talk will give a solid overview of what the canvas tag is, what it can do, and how it compares with other technologies like SVG and Flash.

Presentation slides

Session description

WCAG2 is a long series of documents. Gian Wild knows this better than most: she spent six years on the W3C WCAG Working Group writing them. It’s a lot to ask that every developer and project manager read the complete guidelines, including informative content. However there are some very useful — and sometimes hidden — techniques in WCAG2. And some are even at Level AAA. Join Gian to find out what these are.

About Gian Wild

Gian has worked in the accessibility industry since 1998 and consulted on the development of the first Level AAA accessible web site in Australia (Disability Information Victoria). She has worked with the Disability Services arm of the Victorian Government for over thirteen years to keep the four iterations of the Disability Services site (Disability Information Victoria, Disability Services, Disability Online and DiVine), Level AAA accessible. She ran the accessibility consultancy PurpleTop from 2000 to 2005 and built the accessibility tool, PurpleCop.
Follow Gian on Twitter: @accessibilityoz"
["post_title"]=>
string(51) "Gian Wild - WCAG2 accessibility: the hidden nuggets"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(299) "

There are some very useful — and sometimes hidden — techniques in WCAG2. And some are even at Level AAA. Join Gian to find out what these are.

The key focuses of this session will be accessibility, searchable media, and enriching existing multimedia experiences with timed data, all with a liberal application of flashy eye-candy. And of course we’re using the freshly minted Timed Text Track specification, soon appearing in a browser near you!

During this session we will demonstrate some early prototypes and experiments, key uses of Linked Data, practical publishing tools and discuss how this work is unfolding inside one of Australia’s major collecting institutions.

In this talk I will describe the work we’re doing to ensure that the standards-based Web wins again — developing new technologies, extending Web standards, and shipping great products on all kinds of devices. I’ll talk about the challenges we face and what people who care about competition and freedom can do to help.

With most browsers adding increasing support, and the simplicity of providing fallbacks for those that don’t, CSS3 gradients are something we can start to use right now. They benefit our users with faster websites and ourselves with more time in our hands to spend in other things, since they are easy to create, edit and update. A very powerful feature that can also be utilized for a surprising number of design effects, even ones that don’t resemble gradients at all. In this talk, Lea will explore CSS3 gradients in great depth and it’s almost guaranteed that no matter your expertise level, you will walk out having learned new things.

In this session Dave will cover high-​​performance presentation and animation using HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3 and Canvas. Examples will include mobile-​​friendly techniques you can use today for creating game effects and “flashy” user experiences across a range of browsers and devices.

There’s an old expression, that there are only 2 hard problems in computing: naming, cache invalidation and off-by-one errors. Building offline web apps is all about those hard problems. We’ll spend the bulk of our time on these hard problems, which is probably more useful than api description and sample code.

This keynote will focus on the unique potential offered to web developers — the ability to use the web platform to build compelling applications that reach across different devices, scenarios and environments. In discussing the approaches necessary to deliver great experiences across all these spaces, we will also uncover unique opportunities in a platform that reaches from mobile phones to the biggest display screen in your house.

As browsers explode with new capabilities and migrate onto devices users can be left wondering, “what’s taking so long?” Learn how HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the web itself conspire against a fast-running application and simple tips to create a snappy interface that delight users instead of frustrating them.

Find out how to creatively use new features of CSS3 (gradients, multiple backgrounds, generated content, and many more) to give life to your design ideas, make them adaptable and maintainable, and provide the best experience possible on an array of platforms.

The Canvas tag has been around for a while, and HTML5 has given it more visibility. It’s now finding its way into most mobile browsers, and even a majority of desktop browsers. This talk will give a solid overview of what the canvas tag is, what it can do, and how it compares with other technologies like SVG and Flash.

About

The people and thoughts behind Web Directions

Founded in Australia in 2004, by long time web industry figures John Allsopp and Maxine Sherrin, (and now run by John), Web Directions conferences bring together the web industry’s leading experts from around the world to educate and inspire our attendees.